The Far East

Churchill did not take part in Yalta's Far Eastern discussions. His memoirs for late 1944 show his curt dismissal of the importance of China. "This American obsession," he wrote. "That China is one of the world's four great powers is an absolute farce." At Yalta Churchill was content to let Roosevelt and Stalin play out the farce by themselves.

The Background. Their private conferences at Yalta had a background that revealed Roosevelt's willingness to expand the Russian position in the Far East, where the defeat of Japan and the civil war in China were to create a power vacuum.

P: As early as October 1943, during a visit to Moscow, Secretary Hull reported Stalin's promise, without being asked and without attaching strings, that Russia would fight Japan after finishing up in Europe.

P: At Teheran, five weeks later, Stalin repeated the pledge. He also let it be known that he would like a warm-water port in the Far East. Churchill remarked that Russia already had Vladivostok. Stalin replied it wasn't always ice-free. Roosevelt suggested the Russians might have access to Dairen, in Manchuria.

P: All through 1944 the U.S., through diplomatic channels in Moscow, sought to translate Stalin's pledge to fight Japan into a military plan. The Russians stalled. It now seems clear that Stalin passed down a nyet until he had made sure of his territorial ambitions in the Far East. These were finally laid out in full detail and traced on a map by Stalin in a conversation with Ambassador Harriman on Dec. 14, 1944. Items on the Kremlin's demand list: "return" to Russia of Japan's Kurils and southern Sakhalin; leases on Manchuria's Port Arthur and Dairen, plus operating rights on the Manchurian railways; China's surrender of its claims to Sovietized Outer Mongolia.

P: U.S. State Department experts looked askance on some of Stalin's claims. They recommended that 1) southern Sakhalin and the northern Kurils should not be annexed by Russia, but should be assigned as trusteeships; and 2) the southern Kurils should be kept for Japan.

P: At Malta, four days before Yalta, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden told Stettinius that the U.S. need not grant such concessions to Russia. "In his view," report the State Department's minutes of the Malta Conference, "if the Russians decided to enter the war against Japan, they would take the decision because they considered it in their interests that the Japanese war should not be successfully finished by the U.S. and Great Britain alone. There was therefore no need for us to offer a high price for their participation."

Foreground. Whether or not this clear-eyed British counsel reached his ears or understanding, Roosevelt ignored it. Bohlen's minutes show the President ready to give Stalin just what he wanted.

Exchanges from the Yalta record:

Stalin vaguely agrees he will order his military planners to sit down with their U.S. counterparts to work out a common war against Japan. But he is eager to get to the "political conditions."

Roosevelt quickly replies there is "no difficulty whatsoever" over the Kurils and southern Sakhalin. As to Dairen, it ought to be a free port.

Stalin remarks the Russians won't be "difficult." He has no objections to "an internationalized port." But what about the Manchurian railways?

Roosevelt has two plans ready: the railways might be leased by the Russians, or jointly operated by Russia and China.

Stalin says slyly that without such concessions "it would be difficult ... to explain to the Soviet people why Russia was entering the war against Japan ... a country with which they had no great trouble."

Roosevelt several times explains that he has not consulted Chiang Kaishek.

Stalin says that "it would be well to leave here with these conditions set forth in writing, agreed to by the three powers."

Roosevelt unhesitatingly thinks "this could be done."

Thus Stalin had his prize in hand. Two days later Molotov handed to Harriman a draft of Stalin's political conditions. With Roosevelt's approval Harriman suggested some changes. Most important: Port Arthur should be internationalized. Stalin came personally to Harriman, and what followed is reported by Harriman:

"[Stalin] said that he was entirely willing to have Dairen a freeport under international control, but that Port Arthur was different. It was to be a Russian naval base, and therefore Russia required a lease. I suggested to Marshal Stalin that he take the opportunity to discuss this matter at once with the President, which he thereupon did. The President agreed to Marshal Stalin's revised proposal. . .

"The President asked . . . whether Stalin wished the President to take [these matters] up with the Generalissimo (Chiang Kai-shek],

"Marshal Stalin replied that as he was an interested party he would prefer to have the President do it ..."

Not once do the records show Roosevelt arguing on behalf of China's independence, or making the point of China's need for Manchuria's industrial production. There was no hint of the long American recognition of China's independence as the key to stability in Asia. Stalin, in the imperialist tradition of the czars, remembered Port Arthur; Roosevelt forgot John Hay and the Open Door.

The U.S. copy of the agreement was kept in a secret White House file by Admiral Leahy. The President said not a word about it, even to his special adviser, Jimmy Byrnes, who denied six months after he became Secretary of State that such a paper existed.

Sequel. The President did not live to see Chiang Kai-shek's concurrence. But it was given, angrily yet inevitably. The Sino-Soviet treaties with all of Stalin's demands in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia were signed Aug. 14, 1945--the day Japan surrendered. In return for Chiang's concurrence, Stalin recognized Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria, promised Chiang military and economic aid.

Instead, over the next four years, Stalin blocked Nationalist China's return to Manchuria; Stalin armed and otherwise abetted the Chinese Communists as they built up a decisive army in Manchuria; Stalin looted Manchuria of $2 billion worth of Japanese industrial equipment on which Chiang had counted for China's economic uplift. Then, in late 1949, two days after Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the Chinese Communist state, Stalin withdrew formal recognition from Chiang and gave it to his longtime Chinese protege.

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